One of the many current unresolved issues for the higher education sector is whether the UK will continue to have access to EU science and innovation programmes such as Horizon2020 (and its planned successor, FP9), after Brexit.

The announcement from the Prime Minister on Monday suggests that the UK is seeking a form of associate membership of these schemes, and would be willing to pay for that access.

This would be good news for UK academics and institutions involved in a very wide range of collaborative UK/EU research projects, many of which are led by the UK and with EU funds.

It, of course, remains to be seen how the European Commission will respond to this (and other requests) by the UK to "opt in" to a number of arrangements when it is a third country.

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The United Kingdom would like the option to fully associate ourselves with the excellence-based European science and innovation programmes – including the successor to Horizon 2020 and Euratom R&T.